


Deadlight

by gamblignant8 (maltesecaptainfalcon)



Series: The Voyage of the Ondine [1]
Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Detective Noir, F/F, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-06-22 13:46:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15583293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maltesecaptainfalcon/pseuds/gamblignant8
Summary: It rains dreams in Deadlight. Droplets of crushed dream bubbles pour down from the dark sky, leaving rainbow oil-slick puddles on the crowded streets. It’s another windy but warm evening. You stop looking out the window and take a sip of your iced tea, enjoying the way the fragile sound of ice cubes colliding matched the rain drops pattering against your office window, blurring the street lights and neon signs of the city.After activating the weapon, Vriska crashes into the city where double-dead ghosts end up.





	1. Chapter 1

**VRISKA**  
  
There are two kinds of promises you make. One are the kind where you know you’re lying, like when you promised Kanaya you wouldn’t get violent if Rose picked up drink again. It’s okay to break those, if it’s for somebody’s own good. It’s your duty as a hero.  
  
The other kind, though, are the kind you hold yourself to. The real promises that guide you, and you keep track of every one. When you lose track of your promises, things spiral out of your control and people get hurt, most of all yourself. And you promised her. You promised Terezi you’d be back.  
  
That was what was on your mind when you stared Lord English down and opened the weapon. And as your pan was flooded with a hum from beyond everything, all feeling inverted and enveloped in a great and terrible light, all you can think was that you failed her. In darkness, you felt like you were falling, breaking through a dew-slick web, bits sticking to you and sloughing off.  
  
You thought of your mother, and if this was how her sudden death at your hands felt. You thought of John, the hero who never had to regret. You thought of Kanaya, the first girl who saw through you; who, in you, finally found a light that could burn her. Of course, most of all, you thought of Terezi, and how she stitched the universe back together to save you. How much you needed to do this to deserve that mercy, to deserve her. Then the darkness took even your feeling from you, and you slipped into nothing.  


* * *

* * *

  
**ROSE**  
  
It rains dreams in Deadlight. Droplets of crushed dream bubbles pour down from the dark sky, leaving rainbow oil-slick puddles on the crowded streets. It’s another windy but warm evening. You stop looking out the window and take a sip of your iced tea, enjoying the way the fragile sound of ice cubes colliding matched the rain drops pattering against your office window, blurring the street lights and neon signs of the city.  
  
You set down the tea, sighed to yourself, and got back to work gathering as much information as you could about the monsters and deep secrets of the cosmos, in your own peculiar way. You put your fingers to the keyboard and wrote.  
  
The fiction poured out of you, stories of mages, chronomancers, hagiophages, and fallen kingdoms. Only later could you unravel the prophecies you were channeling, drawing the light from the universe itself. You'd created a vast library of predictive literature; you had whole shelves in your office full of the findings you and your associates had analyzed from your writing, guiding you to more answers about this place where you now made your home. You could think even as your fingers tapped out the literature like pizzicato notes on a violin.  
  
Your name is ROSE LALONDE, and it’s been a few years since you died, alone in a timeline that faded to dust when a troll girl tricked your Heir into dying early. You don't remember dying, exactly, but you still woke up bleary and hung over in Multi-color Bubble Squid God Purgatory. Lucky you.  
  
A lot of bullshit has happened to you since then. You died again, which is apparently a thing you can do. And when you do that, it seems, you land here. The last stop of this particular tangle of paradox space: Deadlight Skaia, the always dark and clouded Battlefield-turned-sprawling city pocketed by the cherub who would become Lord English in the First Break. At least, that’s what the leader of your gang tells you.  
  
You’re in the  uUnion, one of the factions vying for control over this dead dream cityscape. The corner of your laptop screen blinks to indicate that one of your colleagues needs to speak to you. You pause the flow of prophetic purple prose and tab over to your chat client.  


HAL (timaeusTestified) began pestering ROSE (tentacleTherapist) at 20:33  
  
TT: We’ve got some new readings on the soul sensors.  
TT: Oh?  
TT: And what double-dead ghosts are we rolling out the welcoming committee for this week?  
TT: Actually, it’s a bit bigger than that. We’ve got a live one.  
TT: Three live ones, actually. But one showed up on Felt turf and one was near the Gamblignant Queen’s flagship, and we only have one response team, so we can only get the third bogey before the bad guys.  
TT: You have 1 minute and 26 seconds before our transport is loaded and ready for you to board from your fire escape.

You put on your headset and you’re already standing, slipping on your bridge coat. “Wow, we’ve really gotten that response time down,” you offer, sardonically, picking out your favorite wands from the rack behind your desk. “Do we have any idea who these living intruders are?”

You open the window and step out onto the fire escape, rain getting on your floor before you can shut the pane behind you. Hal’s voice comes in through your earpiece. “None whatsoever. We got a ton of new ghost signals, too, but I’ve made the decision to prioritize the only living player we can get our hands on with my supreme mechanical intellect.” You can hear the engine of your hovering troop transport — stolen off the Gamblignant Queen in one of your finer moments as an underground resistance — collecting your colleagues from the floor below. “I’ve deployed a Squarewave-class retrieval drone immediately. We’ll have eyes on the target in a minute or so. I’m patching you onto the group frequency now.”

You hear the fuzz of changing channels and the ship rises up to you, engine thrumming. Hal begins the mission briefing as you take your seat beside John and buckle in. The AI’s going over the crew manifest, so you look around the carrier, now flying nimbly in between buildings towards the Windward Chaos Sea, at the uUnion fellows accompanying you on this journey, all dead-eyed.

You’ve gotten better at reading the emotions of ghosts with blank eyes in your years here as one of them. So you engage in a bit of amateur psychology and try to tell what your compatriots are feeling.

You look at John. This John, your John, the one you can’t stop feeling like you failed. He took a “cheat code” from a troll girl named Terezi you never met and was killed by his denizen. He has the same look of determination he gets before every mission. He just does what needs to be done and keeps a joke at the ready. He gets mad, sure, but it’s always righteous anger, none of the self-pity and rage against the unfairness of the universe you summon in your darkest moments. You envy that.

You look across from you, at the three other members of your strike crew. Feferi is listening to the mission briefing with rapt attention, worrying at her bottom lip with one of her fangs. This is personal to her, you know, with the remnants of the predecessor’s fleet in the hands of a pirate pretender. She won’t stop until the ships are hers, and she’ll be on your side even after that. She wants The Man who cast her whole species in this horrible, macabre play to suffer as much as your crew’s benefactor.

And then there were the two carapacians, one of Prospit, one of Derse. They had seen more than the rest of you, been here longer than any — they were original residents of the universe that bore Deadlight Skaia, and they’ve been fighting for innumerable years to dismantle it and free the spirits of those damned here.  The Prospitian is named Mobius Trip, the Dersite Hadron Kaleido. They clasp hands as the APC sways and both look at each other for strength. Not that they should need it, their bond seems to be unbreakable, and their will, even more so.

You put your focus back on the high, robotic Texan-tinged voice in your earpiece, since it’s finally relaying new information. “Closing in on the biosignal. Infrared scans show troll. Blood temperature on the cooler side.” You see Feferi tilt her head inquisitively at this information. If you recall correctly, cooler blood means it’s a troll from a higher caste, closer to hers. You think on who hasn’t yet been accounted for in Deadlight — there’s no duplicates in this city, for whatever reason. You have no idea who’s still alive in the alpha timeline — you’re in a deep singularity, far away from its influence. You’re pleased, honestly, to learn someone still is. You’re fighting for something.

“The drone has visual. Troll’s unconscious, but floating on their back. Transmitting image now.”

A hologram appears in the center of your APC, that of a girl: lanky, sharp-edged and with long, wild tangles of hair spread out behind her floating form. You have no idea who she is. But the look on Feferi’s face indicates she does. “Vriska.” Oh. John is leaning forward. Before you met again as ghosts, he dated a version of this girl for a while.

“Correct, but we haven’t got time for reminiscing about spiderbitch right now. Scouts by the docks just reported the Orphaner has been scrambled.”

Shit. The Orphaner is the Gamblignant Queen’s second ship, an imperial frigate modified to sail on the dreamsea. If she catches you in open water in this carrier, you’re all toast. You’ve got no weapons aside from the ones in your strife deck and she’s got at least 20 mounted guns. You clutch your wands. “Can we grab the girl and get out in time? Taking on a frigate in this tin can is suicide.”

John looks at you, expressive face betraying every bit of disagreement. “We’re not leaving her to get picked up by Eridan, jeez!”

While you were squabbling, Hadron moved to the front of the APC and got at the manual controls, flipping switches to prepare for approach. Mobius had picked up a holopad and was charting trajectories, segmented hands flying over the projected keys. He speaks up. “About forty-five seconds until rendezvous. Peixes, if you get her into the carrier in less than ten we can get this thing above the clouds and out of radar range,” he says, focus still on the formulas. Feferi is already standing up, zipping her amphibious battle suit. You clear your throat and inject some skepticism. “And if she doesn’t?”

She looks straight at you. Feferi is usually calm, even sweet, carrying herself like a princess. But when you get her riled up, the cool focus betrays the power in her frame and the iron will of someone once destined to conquer. “I will.” You smirk a bit. Being skeptical of her is always the best way to get her in the zone. “Five seconds to arrival.” Hadron turns a dial and the huge door on the side of the APC opens, exposing you to whipping winds. You’re only a few feet off the choppy dream-sea water, and you crane your neck to the front window to see the Squarewave drone shining a light on Vriska, floating serenely in the water. You can’t tell she’s alive with her eyes closed. She looks like just another ghost.

When you get close enough, Fef dives with perfect form into the water, barely making a splash. You clutch the chair hard as Hadron flips the airbrake and spins the craft 180°, spray splashing the interior of the cabin as you slow to a hover just an inch off the water. When the APC stops, you and John both spring up, John moving to the door and you to the rear window to man the scouter during the getaway.

With a whole four seconds left on your mental clock, Vriska’s unconscious body is thrown up into the carrier with a force that’s only surprising if you don’t know just how strong tyrian trolls are. John tries to catch her but ends up landing on his ass with a now-soggy whump. Fef, by contrast, gracefully pulls herself up from the water and lands on her feet, immediately screaming “GO! GO! GO!” Hadron slams the door from her console and immediately gives the EM thrusters full bore as you lurch up towards the sky and the signal-blocking clouds of Deadlight. “Cargo secured,” Mobius relays, “We’re going dark, Hal, we’ll be back below the clouds once we’re over land.” “Over and out.”

As the ship climbs at a steep angle into the skies, Feferi keeps her feet perfectly, but John, already prone, slides backwards down the floor with a squeak and an “Augh!” and you feel the twin thumps of him and Vriska smacking into the back of your chair in the back of the ship. You chuckle under your breath and begin your lookout, searching the seascape for any sign you’re in sight range of Eridan’s frigate.

When you break through the clouds and you haven’t been pinged yet, you exhale and turn around in your chair to observe your quarry. John’s buckled her in to a seat and is rubbing the back of his pained head in his own chair. Mobius has gotten up and is carrying on a conversation with his star-crossed lover in the cockpit. Fef’s doing exactly what you’re about to: staring at the girl you just picked up. You join her in this diverting activity.

Her breathing is even and calm, and her fangs stick out over lips with smudged blue lipstick. She’s ridiculously bony, seeming to be swallowed up by her sopping wet flannel and loose jeans. How did she get here? What happened out there on the other side of Skaia that pulled three living souls and new ghosts into this dead-end city?

You get the feeling the game has changed, possibilities available to your sight unraveling in new ways. This troll girl might be the key to breaking the deadlock in Deadlight.

* * *

**VRISKA**

You come to, not without protest. Your whole body is sore. Honestly, you haven’t felt like this since Aradia kicked your ass, and your eyes flutter open with a groan. You’re staring at a…ceiling. Just a normal-ass ceiling. Not exactly what you expected after opening the great big important weapon in front of the universe’s most powerful evil. You’re in a human-style bed like the kind you had to crash on on the meteor. This game is never dramatic enough, ugh.

You draw in a breath and, owwwwwwww. Your ribs ache sharply with the intake of air. You sit up, unpleasantly, and glower at the end of the room, getting your bearings. John’s lusus’s lusus’s teen self, Jane, has taken notice of you, interest in her empty ghost eyes. More ghosts, just what you needed. This Jane is wearing…mediculler robes? Or something like them, colored in the manner of a Life player. She walks across the room, sterile in decoration and filled with empty beds like yours, and begins looking over a holoscreen projected by your bedside. The atmosphere in the room is a lot calmer than you feel. You hear the ticking of a clock on a wall behind you.

You don’t want to know the answer, but you have to ask. You have to know if you still have a chance to keep your promise, if you have a chance to not be a fucking failure.

“Am I dead?” Man, talking sucks. How long were you out?

The Jane ghost looks at you with something like amusement, which you’re really not in the mood for, thanks.

“No, but you should be. You’re still giving off traces of void energy. Whatever sent you and your friends here was more powerful than anything we’ve seen.” Jane makes a note on the holopad and seems content with her work, giving you her full attention and offering a hand to help you to your feet. You consider leaving her hanging, for no reason other than the fact that you have no idea what’s going on and you’re in a grouchy mood. But whatever. You take it, and get to your feet shakily. “And where, exactly, is ‘here?’”

She leads your aching frame to the window of the mediculler’s chamber, and you look out upon the huge cityscape in front of you. Dark clouds block out the whole sky above, grim mirrors of the ones you saw from your tower in Prospit, more than two sweeps that feel like a lifetime ago. The buildings making up this sprawling urban landscape look like they were ripped straight from the dream planets and drained of all color, just shades of gray and black. Yellow lights and neon signs shine from their windows, and carapacians mill about in droves on the slick paved streets.

“This is Deadlight Skaia. The pocket for history’s biggest 8-ball. You and whoever showed up with you are the first living beings to set foot here since the First Break,” Jane explains as your eyes dart about the city through the window. “It’s thought to be inescapable. It’s ruled by dueling mobs and brutes.” She turns to look at you, taking you in, paying extra attention to your living eyes. Something you’re used to, spending so much time with ghosts of late. “We’ve got our own group together, looking to break their grip on this city and get free.” The human girl moves away from the window, still talking to you as she walks towards a flight of stairs. “Let’s go down and introduce you, shall we?”

You don’t know what you expected. Not this. But with a pained huff, you follow the ghost towards whatever game fate’s making you play next. You’ll beat it.

You have to.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vriska meets the Muse. Jane and the AR help out allies. An unpleasant piece of information is revealed.

**ROSE**

You lean your back against the wall, cup of coffee in your hand. It is an extremely raw deal, still getting tired when you’re a ghost. You take a sip of merciful caffeine and continue to listen to Vriska catch your crew up on the events of the alpha timeline.

Honestly? It sounds like a huge and complicated mess, and you were too recently asleep to really immerse yourself in the details. So you let the _8lah 8lah 8lah_ wash over you like static and disaffectedly take in the scene. Everyone currently stationed at home base is sitting on barstools or at tables in the Colours  & Mayhem, the speakeasy front for uUnion ops. Everyone’s attention is on Vriska, who, despite her fairly evident roughed-up status, is practically luxuriating in it, making big sweeping hand gestures and describing some grand clusterfuck of a Final Battle. There’s basically no way this actually went according to her plan.

More interesting is how she got here. Jane, Hal and Mobius pepper her with technical questions about the “weapon” that sent her and her two living friends here in her confrontation with Lord English, and it’s like nothing any of you have ever heard of. As Vriska starts talking about how she found it, she’s cut off by the woman leaning on the opposite wall from you clearing her throat, and every head in the room turns.

Your benefactor doesn’t show her face at HQ. She’s the most wanted woman in Deadlight, and doesn’t much like company, anyway. Her envoy, now everyone’s focus, wasn’t a common sight around the C&M either. Not that you minded seeing more of Porrim Maryam. Okay, wait, focus up, Lalonde, she’s your boss.

Your hot ghost alien boss crosses her arms and begins to speak, in her commanding-yet-melodic voice. “Yeah. We’re taking this up the ladder. Thief, Seer, with me.”

You and Vriska meet each other’s eyes and you give her a slight shrug and down too much of your coffee in one gulp, leaving the mug for someone else to deal with. The two of you climb the stairs behind Porrim and head for the street, Vriska rolling with it with her hands in her pockets.

This neighborhood’s all yours, which took quite a bit of doing and no shortage of street brawls. A little corner of the town where the other gangs don’t dare to tread. Home, or close enough, bars, shops and row houses all familiar even in the perpetual darkness. Porrim waves over a Dersite black cab driver, one of your trusted ones, and says, “take ‘em to 720.” She gestures for you to get into the car, does a half-salute with two fingers, and disappears with a flash of her fancy Space powers. Showoff. You hold the door of the cab open and half-assedly curtsey for Vriska as the driver clambers in and she rolls her eyes at you. Who says chivalry is dead?

* * *

**VRISKA**

Faux-courtesy is a universal Rose Lalonde trait, you guess. You roll your eyes at her little display and clamber into the cab gracelessly. She follows. You are, at this point, about at your limit of being shuttled from one place to another without understanding what’s going on. Actually, you know what, you’re gonna say that.

“I am, at this point,” you say, shockingly, “about at my limit of being shuttled from one place to another and not understanding what the fuck is going on!!!!!!!!”

Okay. You lost your cool a bit there. You feel like shit and you’d like to get out of this stupid city and find Terezi. The Rose ghost raises a single eyebrow at you in that infuriating Lalonde way. “Are you finished?”

If this was your Lalonde you’d give her a punch on the upper arm and she’d know to can it. But. Square one with these damn ghosts. You give a little shrug of affirmation, looking away from her at the gloomy view through the cab window as you set off. You don’t see her amused smile.

“There are some forces powerful enough to kill even ghosts. That sort of power only exists if wrested from Skaia by force. This was the Skaia where Lord English got that kind of power. Some things he smashes up have ended up here over the years of his reign of destruction. You — anyone living — ending up here is a pretty unthinkable anomaly.”

You’re already thinking eight seconds ahead, scrabbling for some simple explanation for what you’re hearing. “I stopped him. Every prophecy said my weapon was the thing that would bring him down.”

She considers you for a bit. “Maybe. You certainly did something. That’s why we’re consulting the expert.”

You slam your head against the back of the leather cab seat and exhale sharply. You are so tired of big important figures explaining things to you. You don’t want any more poisonous words from a spider, life lessons from a journal, smug predation from an immortal cue ball, or choices offered by monsters in caves! At this point you are an expert. You don’t have to take this bullshit, actually, not from random ghosts with mob beef! You look this other Rose down, seated across from you. It’s clear that she doesn’t get it. She’s not your friend, not the Rose you auspisticized for back on the meteor. She squints a bit and offers, after a beat, “I’m sorry this is all happening so fast.”

Why are people who don’t know you yet always so stupid! “Exact opposite problem, Lalonde. I have things to do.”

Rose tilts her head. “I heard you describing the situation. You were out for days.” As she continues, the mention of days is already stinging at you. “Whatever happened out there, it already happened. Either your friends won, and will be waiting for you…or they lost, and you’d be wise not to turn away from the help of knowledgable ghosts.” This one still hasn’t lost that suit-of-armor superiority complex. You’re pretty confident she hasn’t had a Kanaya in her life to chip away at it. The mean part of your pan cracks a joke about how you’re jealous of that, but then you just sting at the thought of Fussyfangs and all the people that matter to you, fates uncertain. She’s not getting it.

You are really in no mood for that smug garbage today. Fuck it. You go for the throat. “Have you ever loved anyone, Lalonde?”

* * *

**ROSE**

Okay. Maybe you were a little flippant. The response has you on your back foot in this repartee. The first picture in your mind is of a delighted Feferi kissing you square on the lips after the two of you got in and out of a Midnight Crew slaughterhouse with a full shipment of smuggled guns. But that was just a bit of silliness and excitement from her, nothing like love. And certainly John is important to you, and Dave is, too, off in the hopefully-non-fucked timeline.

But the only thing that sticks is staying up way too late on stormy evenings in Rainbow Falls, smiling at messages in green and trying to impress the boundless, silly thing that was Jade Harley. Was. You let your player get killed, and, because of that, she died alone, struck by a meteor whose huge impact radius you still remember from the screen in your mother’s lab. Your first friend, your first crush.

You realize it’s been too long. This annoying troll girl won this exchange, just by virtue of your silence. “Not here.”

She makes a near-imperceptible click of sympathy. You almost don’t think it was mocking, because you don’t think you were supposed to hear it.

She leans in, crazy-determined look in her eyes. “I told her I’d be back. I don’t know whether she’s alive or dead.” She’s staring at you with a total seriousness now, focus intensified by hers being the first pupils you’ve seen for a long time; unusual, unsettling ones, at that, seven pupils in her left eye all sizing you up at once. “I’m sorry I don’t want to sit through _meeeeeeeetings_.”

Yeah, okay. You put some actual manners together, and say “I’m sorry,” as you put a hand over hers in a little gesture of comfort. She gives another little shrug and barely an eighth of a smile as you pull back. Maybe it’s just how much better you’ve gotten at reading faces, but this girl is an open book. You’ve known her for about thirty minutes and you think you have enough ammunition for days of choice emotional deconstruction. “If anyone knows how to get you out of here, it’s the Muse. I promise we’ve tried ‘just fly away.’”

You actually get a laugh out of her with that one, and it’s a sharp, almost pained thing, like everything else about her. You hazard a more constructive question. “Tell me about her.”

Vriska looks at you, and the look on her face is that of someone who’s thinking of far too much at once. “She—” and she cuts herself off to think a bit more, shaking her head so her unruly mane of thick hair flips back behind her shoulder, by appearances a well-practiced move. “She helped me figure out who I was. I don’t even know what I’d be like if I’d never met her. I don’t wanna know.”

She turns away looks out the window. You can tell she’s looking for something else to think about, and her eyes scan on the way the tightly-packed city unravels to bigger, broader, buildings. Warehouses and stockyards, all suffused in the eerie, dream-dark glow of the clouds. She vaguely gestures to the outside with a hand that, like most of her, is always fidgeting, this one returning to play with one of the buttons on her flannel shirt. She asks, “How long has this place been here?”

“You’d have to ask our resident Agents about the details, but: a very long time. The first ghosts here were carapacian veterans of various wars between our linked sessions’ respective Prospits and Derses.” You pronounce it _der-cees_ , an opinion on its pluralization you’ve staunchly stuck to in spite of John’s titanically intellectual rebuttal of _that sounds stupid_. If Vriska has similar pronunciation qualms, she doesn’t voice them as you continue. “Every one that died in our sessions ended up here over the years. They’re naturally inclined towards building cities and raising civilizations, and they have some sort of ability to summon structures from memories in this strange, compressed dream.”

“Everything was boring and idyllic in that pleasantly bland, generic-chess-guy way. But a mansion filled with two rival mobs blew up and sent their ghosts here. That’s how this place got the Midnight Crew and The Felt, well before the arrival of any humans or trolls. They’ve ruled their parts of the city with iron fists, but Mobius and Hadron a great deal of local allies here, in preparation for when the Muse would arrive. And arrive she did. Things got complicated a few years ago by the arrival of all of us. A significant amount of the troll empress’s old fleet ended up here, as well, now under pirate command.”

Your taxi pulls into a garage by the docks, secretly-armed Dersites milling about by the entrance. Porrim, patient as ever, is waiting for the two of you as you get out of the car. She gives you a nod and hangs up a wrench on a specific lug on the wall, flicking a mechanism that causes a great mechanical creaking as a wall of tools folds back to reveal a stairwell down, marble a contrast to the shabby surroundings, lit by an eerie green glow. “She’s expecting you,” Porrim says.

You gesture for Vriska to walk before you with an “ _après vous_.” She rolls her eyes a bit and steps down, hands in her pockets, slouch on her shoulders.

What a strange girl.

* * *

**JANE**

You’ve been welding long enough for the heat thrown off to cause you to sweat a bit, even with the big box fan blowing on you in the workshop. You put down the torch and flip up your mask to take a break. In truth, the hard work was relaxing, even if engineering wasn’t your specialty. You’d spent enough time talking to Dirk about his projects to pick up the basics — he seemed happy to have someone who cared to listen.

You’ve been very lonely here since your death — a sword plunged through your heart by some self-important and obnoxious blue-blood troll named Aranea. You look up at the wall of your workshop, where a pair of cracked sunglasses sits, wired into the walls of the building by an extensive network. The AR, or Hal, the name you’re never sure if he’s being ironic or actually wants to be called, is all you have left of your life growing up. You were always the only one of your friends that didn’t mind him, and the two of you make an extremely effective team. You make your way over to your workbench and fetch a towel for your forehead, opening up AR’s chat interface.

HAL ( timaeusTestified ) began pestering JANE ( gutsyGumshoe ) at 09:12

TT: The antimatter aligner is looking good. Your bevel joints are getting better, Jane.  
TT: Nice work.  
GG: Thank you!  
GG: Is it time to meet up with Deadlight’s weirdest purveyor of fine mechanical goods?  
TT: We’ve got a bit of time before we need to head out to make a sweaty rendezvous.  
TT: Might as well shoot the shit.  
GG: Might as well!  
TT: So, new girl, huh?  
GG: New girl. She seems…intense!  
GG: If what she said is true, then I guess we didn’t mess things up permanently. There’s an alive version of me and all our friends out there.  
GG: Maybe her arrival will help us find our missing ghosts, or do SOMETHING.  
TT: Maybe.  
TT: Beyond the contrivances of plots we’re probably just pawns in, though:  
TT: You gonna go for it?  
GG: I’m certain I have no idea what you’re talking about.  
TT: Ha ha.  
GG: I met her for about five seconds!  
GG: And the things Feferi’s said about her make her seem complicated, to say the least.  
GG: And also, I’m quite happy to immerse myself in my work here and keep looking for my friends!!  
GG: Some of us need to actually keep things running around here.  
TT: Don’t I know it.  
TT: No need to be defensive, though.  
TT: I was just teasing you, she doesn’t seem like your type at all.  
TT: And, honestly, based on my memories recorded from when I shared a sprite with Mr. Musclesmith himself, she seems like kind of a total nightmare.  
TT: So, more Lalonde’s type.  
GG: Hoo hoo!  
GG: I can’t even imagine the kind of trouble the Muse is going to get the two of them into.  
TT: Luckily, I have no limits on my imagination, thanks to my towering machine intellect.  
TT: I predict with 96.5% certainty that shit is about to get excruciatingly real.  
GG: That’s a high percentage!  
TT: I know.  
TT: The flighty broad realness quotient does not stop from getting taller.  
TT: Anyway, let’s get this show on the road.

A bit of prep later, you step out into the perpetual night, polished trident tucked into your strife deck and god robes fitting loose and comfortably, hood up. Your usual glasses have been swapped out for Dirk’s ridiculous shades so you can stay in touch with AR. You could’ve gone for an understated visor like Rose and the others, but it tickles you to imagine the ridiculous figure you cut in the anime glasses, and you like carrying a part of a friend you love and miss with you on your excursions. Let it be known that Jane Crocker has never backed down from silly facial accouterments.

You’ve got a big walk ahead of you to the forge of one of your crew’s more…interesting allies. Equius Zahhak is a troll unmatched in Deadlight for three things: advanced robotics, weaponsmithing, and industrial-scale sweating. He’s more than a little unsettling, honestly, but he’s on your side firmly as long as his moirail is, and Feferi’s seen to that.

You’re here for a routine pickup — he should have a robotic torso casing and a voidcraft aileron for you and AR’s Big Secret Projects. As you draw within a block, though, you see a warm glow in the distance and smell smoke. Carapacian citizens, in a panic, are running away from where you’re heading. You break into a run and feel the comforting presence of your weaponized fork in your hand. Hal’s picked up on this and your shades have switched to combat mode, your vitals in the corner and overlay ready to ID hostiles.

As it turns out, you don’t need much help identifying there’s a situation when you turn the corner and see a fire raging, consuming Equius’s workshop and home. Silhouetted in front of it, a street fight is well underway. Equius and his moirail, Nepeta, are scrapping with a hulking monster of a leprechaun, who just barely misses crushing Nepeta into the pavement with his huge fire extinguisher before she rolls away, springing to her feet and slashing at him with her clawed gauntlets.

You can tell Hal’s in business mode when his laconic Texan twinge falls away and he’s saying things with absolute precision. “Matchsticks. Eighty yards away. He can summon help and time travel through fire.” Your legs are pumping, picking up speed as you close the distance to the scuffle.

“And the extinguisher?” Matchsticks is outlined through your shades, the number of yards between you and the titan ticking down.

“Just an extinguisher. Make a play for it and get the fire put out if you don’t want him getting away.”

With about thirty yards left, you kick off the ground and fly fast, pulling back the trident in your arms. Ahead of you, Equius takes a huge blow from the extinguisher that lands with a clang and he tumbles backwards, sliding backwards in the pavement and kicking up oil-slick puddle water. Nepeta growls and leaps up at the Felt muscle, sinking her fangs into his neck brutally.

It’s the perfect opening, and you arc downwards and bring all the force of your trident down onto Matchsticks’ arm, pinning it to the pavement in a gush of red as the extinguisher clatters to the ground, rolling away. You land and hit the ground running, struggling to lift the huge extinguisher and direct the nozzle at the fire raging in the huge workshop windows, now totally shattered.

As you put out the flames, Equius, face a mess of blue blood, gets to his feet and staggers to the assistance of his moirail, pummeling the grounded Matchsticks with a brutality that’s hard to even listen to. He’s pretty much pulp on the pavement by the time you get the blaze put out completely.

Equius stands, covered in sweat and blood, both in Matchsticks' red and his own blue, breathing heavily. He puts a hand around Nepeta’s shoulder, pulling her in close. He ends the embrace and turns to you, face a perpetual grimace.

“Thank you for your assistance, Crocker.” He surveys the ruins of his workshop. “Apparently our clandestine project has been discovered.” He clenches his fist, hard, bloody knuckles turning white. “I think it’s in the best interest of my moirail’s safety if I continue my work from your more secure compound.” It’s not a question. You nod.

Nepeta claps, squealing with excitement. “Finally! I’ve been waiting fur sooo long to be a part of this resistance thing!”

You look back at the workshop. “Let’s see if we can salvage anything from in there, shall we?”

HAL ( timaeusTestified ) responded to memo DEAD MOBSTER BINGO.

TT: Ladies and gentlemen, we got one.  
TT: The number eleven ball has been pocketed.  
TT: If you had Jane, Nepeta or Equius in the office first blood pool, message me for your payout.

1/16 FELT DEAD  
0/4 MIDNIGHT CREW DEAD  
0/8 GAMBLIGNANTS DEAD

* * *

**ROSE**

The absolute silence in the Muse’s soundproofed chamber is nothing short of unsettling. You can hear the blood pumping in your ears. She spent untold eons waiting in silent void for her role in this tale, and prefers to keep her surroundings absolutely still. The green torches are only lit for visitors, you know. She spends most of her time here meditating, plotting, orchestrating in total darkness and silence.

She’s standing, hood of her black robe on her head, dark eyes looking down at Vriska. The Muse beckons her forward, and she steps up without hesitation.

“I am Calliope, the Muse of Space,” she starts, preternaturally calm syllables stilted from limited experience talking to others, “You know my brother as the cherub who took the mantle of Lord English. I am from a world where I triumphed over him in our grim game, and I struck a deal with the Mother of Monsters for the chance to seal him away from every timeline and end his reign of terror.”

“I created this place. The only thing that could stop a fully-realized Lord of Time is a singularity denser and more powerful than any before in paradox space. The black hole of the collapsed Green Sun, which you unleashed with the powerful juju you discovered. This is the other side of that singularity, a resting place for souls claimed by my brother’s reign of terror.”

She takes one step forward, torchlight casting shadows on her skeletal face. If Vriska is afraid or intimidated, she’s not showing it. The Muse continues. “I have waited for you, child. The arrival of living souls here will end the stalemate. Heroes of Light, Time and Doom will finally bring a close to this grim symphony.”

Vriska narrows her eyes and tilts her head a bit. “Aradia and Sollux made it?”

Calliope nods, slowly. “They are in the hands of darker forces who also recognize their power. Retrieve them and we can begin the next phase.”

“Sure. Okay. Get my friends back from some losers. Let me ask you a question, cherub.” Vriska points, jabbing a sharp finger at the Muse. You’ve never seen someone so unfazed by her. “Do we survive this next phase?”

Calliope wears a totally blank expression. You’ve never seen her emote. Before Deadlight, she spent eons alone. “That depends on you.” The Muse raises her hand and gestures at you. “The Seer can identify a way.”

Vriska turns back to you, sizing you up. Her seven-pupil eye twitches a bit. “Fine. Deal. I’ll run errands for your gang here if it means I get out of this dump.”

Calliope turns her back immediately, sitting on the ground with her legs crossed, ready to resume her meditation. “Good. Leave me.”

You do, Porrim closing the stairs to the chamber behind you and opening the cab door for you both.

You carry on a bit of conversation about the tasks ahead, the enemies you face and what you need to do to infiltrate each. She digs into the plans with ravenous detail. About halfway through the drive back, during a lull, you remember the talk earlier and circle back.

“The girl you’re getting back to, what was her name? She sounds lovely.”

Vriska lights up a bit and smiles, _really_ smiles. “Terezi Pyrope.”

You can’t hide how your expression immediately goes blank. Terezi — the Terezi, her Terezi — killed John. For _fun_. Terezi doomed your timeline. Terezi caused you to die alone and friendless in a ruin of a universe. Terezi took Jade from you. Your jaw clenches. You nod and fake a smile, then turn to look at anything but the girl in the seat next to you. She tries a few times to make conversation again, confused by your reaction, but you shrug them off. After a bit of that, the rest of the ride passes in silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whether or not Kanaya and Rose thought Vriska was their auspistice, Vriska definitely thought she was. And, honestly, the fact that they both died without her around is a pretty solid argument for her (annoying) presence in that relationship.
> 
> Jane is super strong, as shown by her ability to just straight up uppercut Jake into the air. She likes wearing suits. I’m going to make the stretch of a lifetime and assume she’s the kinda butch who, once freed of a heiress-and-societally-imposed sole interest in baking, gets the hell into other crafts. Like building a mysterious thing with her robot friend.
> 
> For those curious about the precise origins of the ghosts featured here so far:
> 
> • Rose and John are from the same offshoot timeline as Davesprite, where John was killed by his Denizen after Terezi gives him the pshooes.  
> • This ghost John appears in the story, briefly dating ghost-(Vriska) in canon before being double-killed.  
> • Alive!Rose is depicted receiving the memories of this dead Rose, but she also got a ghost for the purposes of this story. She didn’t particularly want to.  
> • Feferi is from the alpha timeline, killed by Eridan’s wand. This ghost freaks out dream Jade in canon.  
> • Nepeta is whichever one is depicted reuniting with Equius’s ghost in Terezi: Remem8er. Not sure how that works, entirely, with Davepetasprite^2 being a thing. Ghosts sure are confusing!!  
> • Jane, AR and Equius are from the Game Over timeline. The other casualties of that timeline have not been seen in Deadlight.  
> • Alternate Calliope is the same one from canon.  
> • The Midnight Crew and Felt are the ones that died in the intermission. Snowman and Spades Slick have not been seen in Deadlight.  
> • Mobius and Hadron? That’s a long story, which will be told in an intermission of this fic.  
> • All dancestors featured are the primary ghosts met in Openbound.
> 
> This fic will be updated every Monday, and will run for 10 chapters.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Diamonds Droog is having a relaxing morning; Hal interrupts. Vriska and John scout out Felt Manor, looking for Aradia, and time bullshit occurs. Later, Feferi and Vriska discuss the Alternia that was.

**DIAMONDS DROOG**

You delicately lower the needle onto the track and breathe in the sound of warm static before the playhead hits the start of the record. It’s a late Buttermilk Stubbs, with meandering oboe setting just the right mood. It’s a favorite for starting the day.

You pick up your mug of fresh-brewed coffee and sit down at your mahogany desk, comfortable in your plush leather chair. You take a slow breath in and unfold the newspaper on your desk. Everyone was running around like their asses were on fire yesterday about this front-page news, _LIVING SOULS IN DEADLIGHT? EXCLUSIVE INVESTIGATION_. Maybe under your old leadership you’d all be scurrying around like idiots, getting kicked around by green guys and trolls with spaceships.

That’s now how things go at the new Midnight Crew. The DIAMONDS DROOG Midnight Crew. You’re all gonna relax, take a step back, and make a plan. You skim over the rest of the story and then your sleek black PDA buzzes on your desk. You look over at it languidly and take your time reaching for it.

It’s Clubs Deuce. He says there’s something weird on his chat client. You say maybe he should stop getting viruses from looking at licorice porn. He says hey, he reads Black Inches for the stories. You say sure. He says no really though, there’s an entry on his contact list he didn’t add. You say okay? He says you should check if it’s on yours too. You say you’re busy. He says no you’re not. You say you are. He says you never do anything first thing in the morning. You say fuck you. He says that’s rude.

You decide to shut the little guy up and page back to your contacts list. And sure enough, there is a gaudy red entry shitting up the stately gray of the rest of your rolodex. You tell Clubs you’ll check it out. He says thanks. You say sorry for insulting his pornography. He says it’s just a magazine. You say sure. You say you’ll talk to him later, make sure he keeps an eye on the new guy.

You tap on the red name in your list. It’s HAL. You have no idea who the hell that is.

diamondsDroog (DD) began pestering HAL (TT)  
  
DD: Alright, buddy. You’d better have a real good reason for interrupting my morning routine.  
TT: How’s “dead Felt” for a reason?  
  
[TT sent file MATCHSTICKS_GETTING_BURNT.mp4]

Damn. That’s some solid punching. The huge green guy’s a smear on the pavement by the end of the video. You’d say a few words of respect for a simple henchman killed in the line of duty, but that would require you to give a shit.

DD: You’ve got my attention.  
TT: How much do you know about what they’re working on in Felt Manor?  
DD: You haven’t gotten my attention enough for me to start running my mouth, let’s be clear about that.  
TT: I respect that.  
TT: Look, I think we’re basically after the same thing as you.  
TT: The Man is trying to get hegemonic control over the city and Skaia’s dormant energy to invert the singularity and free his employer.  
TT: This would, like, triple-perma-kill all of us.  
TT: Less importantly, it would probably fuck over everyone living in any universe ever.  
TT: Who the hell knows what the people with the troll spaceships want.  
TT: I haven’t been able to get to any of them yet, even with my supreme artificial intelligence.  
TT: They’ve got a really good tech guy on that fleet.  
TT: So they’re a wildcard.  
TT: You guys?  
TT: You’re just trying to run an honest criminal enterprise.  
TT: Kill some other mobsters, rough up some thugs, gamble, et cetera.  
TT: And you’re very good at that.  


He pauses, as if expecting you to thank him. You don’t.

TT: What if I told you we’ve got a plan to take down the Felt and their smug boss AND take their cool time trinkets?  
DD: It would save us a lot of work.  
DD: I’m gonna guess you need something from us, otherwise you wouldn’t be tripping over yourself to flatter me.  
TT: You don’t know that. Maybe I’m just a nice guy.  
TT: I mean, I am. I’m charming.  
TT: But yes, we need something from you.  
DD: Spectacular. Tell me what it is so I can go back to doing anything but this.  
TT: We need a distraction. Cause some big trouble on the border of your turf with the green guys.  
DD: Sure. I love doing risky things for absolutely no clear reward. It’s basically my favorite recreational activity.  
TT: Awesome, thanks.  
DD: No, seriously, what do we get.  
??: How about this.  
??: The Muse will owe you a favor.

Oh, damn. The Man fucking hates that girl. Anyone who can get under his skin like that is worth a shot, in your book. You’re glad to hear the broad’s still kicking. Fine.

DD: Deal. Six hours from now, expect your distraction.  
TT: Sick. Pleasure doing business with you.

You lean back in your chair, take a sip of your coffee, and let Stubbs’ smooth sound wash over you. You smirk. You’ll make some trouble today.

* * *

**VRISKA**

You have, per usual, no idea what you did to piss off Lalonde earlier. This is pretty much a constant in your life. You’re always fucking up just enough to push people away and nobody ever explains why. You push it out of your mind, another well-honed skill of yours. You’re looking for your friends.

Wind is whipping around on the rooftop, water heater clunking behind you. You’re staked out with John on a lookout nest atop a dark brick tenement, peering through binoculars at the gaudy green of Felt Manor. You feel a sense of deep dread at the knowledge that, somewhere in there, the origin of the white text sits, weakened but not defeated. The messages whose impact you’re still trying to untangle. Another pawn, another young girl being manipulated in his sick game. You’re not afraid. You won’t let yourself be afraid.

The Egbert ghost interrupts your spiral of anxiety. “I’m not hearing a distraction.” You lift your eyes from the binoculars to look over and tell him he’s being impatient, but he instantly cracks up laughing at the sight of you.

“What????????”

Still giggling like a moron, he pulls his human palmhusk out of the pocket of his gray hoodie and shows you yourself in the front-facing camera. You see your own completely unamused look at discovering your eyes ringed with black circles from tampering with the binocs you were just using. This fucking guy, always with the prankster’s gambit. You wipe your eyes, only succeeding at smudging the mark on your face more. You show John a middle finger and he doubles over in quiet laughter again.

“Sorry Vriska,” he says once he recovers, wiping a tear from his blank eye, “it’s a tradition to mess with new recruits!” He takes his phone back from you and turns to look out over the grim city. “It’s nice to see you again. I mean, a version of you, but still! I’m glad you’re alive.”

Bluh. If there’s anything you hate more than having to reintroduce yourself to ghosts, it’s other, worse Vriskas meeting people first. “Which me did you know?”

He looks a little…embarrassed? “Oh, uh, it was the you that got…stabbed by Terezi? For trying to take on Jack? We kinda dated for a while.”

You don’t even care about that last part. Thinking of that version of you, who you almost _were_ , makes you feel sick. You left her crying in the void, and you still don’t entirely know how you feel about that. Most of you feels like she deserves it, for how stupid she was. You’re saved from having to salvage a response by the sound of a far-off BOOM and flames rising from a building a few blocks from the Felt Manor. “Time to go!”

You pick up Egbert effortlessly, feel the wings at your back unfurl, and buzz towards the green target in the haze. You’re just outside the back gates when you see six Felt hop into a car and floor it in the opposite direction, towards the site of the distraction. You’d prefer if they’d drawn more away, but it’ll have to do.

You wave Egbert over and give him a lift over the gate before fluttering over yourself. You can hear the sounds of gunfire in the distance as you creep up to a cellar entrance and start fiddling with the padlock while John keeps a lookout for green torsos. After a few seconds you hear the satisfying _click_ of your little knife undoing the mechanism — you got a lot of practice on the seemingly endless abundance of locked chests on the meteor.

You deftly slide the padlock off and toss it aside with a flick of the wrist and then open the wide door to the basement, setting it down when it’s swung all the way open on the too-green grass outside the manor. Taking one last look around, John ducks in and walks down the steps ahead of you into a room containing various barrels, lit by a single hanging lightbulb. Actually, you notice, there was a second bulb here, but it’s been smashed, glass pieces glinting on the ground. A few feet away, you hear the soft _glugs_ of what smells like gin — you got very familiar with the foul smells of various Earth soporifics during your time dealing with Rose’s alcohol dependency — pouring out of a small cut in the wood of the barrel, nearby several other marks that look like they were all made by the same knife being stabbed frantically. Some spatters of bright red blood — not quite burgundy — have been shed on the barrel and the parts of the ground not already covered by a puddle of junipery booze.

There’s been a fight here, and recently. But aside from the sound of the gin sloshing out and the synchronized tick of clocks on every wall, there’s absolute silence. This is extremely freaky. “We should look for clues,” John whispers. “No shit,” you whisper back, earning an exasperated look and a gentle backhanded slap on the upper arm.

John sets to work, ducking to look under rows of barrels. You look up at the staircase out of the cellar. The door there’s the only other point of entry to this room. Light bleeds out from underneath the jamb. You follow the sightline down the steps to your level and notice a pegboard on the wall by the door. Various carpentry implements hang from it, each with handles painted with a stripe of a blue, close to yours, on white.

You walk closer to the pegboard, eyes locking on a dagger-y knife that looks to you like it could’ve made the cuts in the barrel. You lift it off its spot, and feel the wood of the handle in your hand. John’s still looking around and under stuff when you stride back to the barrel with the cut, rearing back with the knife and making a new mark with a _thwip_ that makes him jump, hitting his head on a shelf. It looks just like the others. John’s rubbing the back of his head with a sour expression, asking you “what was that for?” in a whine that isn’t particularly whisper-y.

“Look, this knife could’ve made these cuts.” With a lazy underhand, you toss the knife to John, it flipping perfectly slowly in the air, a well-practiced move. John makes a shocked little _eep_ sound and ducks out of the way, watching the knife stick in the wood floor next to him and turning to you with an angry expression.

“What the hell!” He raises his voice and his arms simultaneously. “Don’t just throw knives at people!”

You put your palm on your forehead and sigh. God, you miss adventuring with Terezi. She would’ve caught that and moved on to analyzing the weapon. John goes on.

“ _Sorry_ for assuming my teammate in a highly secure infiltration mission would be, you know, good at reacting to things. I found the weapon from the fight in here, nimrod!” You’re probably not keeping the best control over your volume, either.

He opens his mouth like he’s gonna say something else, lets his mouth hang open for a little bit and makes a dismissive gesture, stooping down to pick the knife up from the floor. “If this knife,” he points at the knife, condescending tone in his voice, “made _those_ cuts,” (he’s pointing at the bloodstains, now,) “why isn’t there any blood on it?”

You’re about to come up with a retort to his when you realize with the bang of a door opening that you’ve attracted attention. A huge green fucker with an ugly, wide head and a little hat with the same colors as the hilt of your knife barges in. You remember your briefing from the sunglasses-robot-whatever. “Sawbuck. More dumb muscle.” Before you can remember exactly what his weird time power is, though, he’s barging down at you and John. You brace and lower your center of gravity, preparing to use his own momentum against him. You give him a lift when he leaps at you, and he tumbles head over big green ass, smashing into a bunch of barrels back-first, spilling acrid booze everywhere. The smell’s almost making you gag.

You shout, “hold him down!” John’s springing to action as you pounce on him, pinning Sawbuck’s arm as you jam the knife into the side of his neck. The world around the three of you flashes when the knife enters his weird plush frame, a spurt of blood ending up on a now-unbroken barrel. If you were in less of a battle-trance, you might immediately notice that the clocks on the wall moved back just a bit when you stabbed Sawbuck, and the strong smell of spilled booze is gone.

John’s kicking at his big torso and holding on for dear life to a waving arm, movements causing a few of your attempted slashes to miss, leaving scars on the wood of a barrel and breaking a small hole in one, causing gin to burble out in _glugs_. Your realization of the exact cycle of stupidity you just completed hits when a flailing  Sawbuck smashes one of the room’s two working lightbulbs with a meaty fist. Unfortunately, you’re already mid-stab, and it connects just after, sending the three of you jumping again in time. Fortunately, your strike is dead on this thing’s jugular, and he falls over like a downed tree, smacking the ground unceremoniously, clutching to his neck, gagging at blood. He crushes a Wet Floor sign on the way down. You must’ve jumped forward a bit to when they’re cleaning up this room. You and John get to your feet and dust yourself off.

You’re about to say _oh yeah, so that’s that guy’s time power_ , but you only get out the first two words before you hear someone clearing his throat behind you. You whip around in time to see a huge, broad-shouldered green lug with a snarl on his face and a “15” on his maroon-striped hat. He’s already winding up for a hit you’re pretty sure you can’t dodge. Wait, you remember this guy! He’s Cans, and he punches you into—

* * *

**VRISKA (NEXT WEEK)**

You just got smacked so hard that, if you were a character in a shitty 3-D movie, you’d fly right out of the screen at a wowed audience that paid four caegars extra to watch their dumb blockbuster through stupid plastic glasses. It is extremely jarring and unpleasant. The way you feel when flying back from the hit is only comparable to a smaller version of the existence-upending lurch you got opening the weapon.

Your disorientation doubles when your surroundings flash in and loud music and a crowd surround you. It triples when the din of the music pauses as you fall to the ground in a heap and the crowd, instead of being surprised, cheers. And then it hits previously unseen levels when Aradia walks up, looking down at you on the ground with that wide-eyed huge grin on her face, and says, “Hi Vriska! What’s with the circles on your eyes?”

What. The fuck. You have somewhere in the vicinity of a thousand questions as Aradia offers you a hand. You take it and get to your feet, taking stock of the room. You’re back in the Colours & Mayhem, and it’s hopping. You’d feel underdressed if you wouldn’t just wear this flannel and jeans to a party anyway.

The bigger carapacians, Mobius and Hadron, if you’re remembering their names right, are set up with a band in one well-lit corner of the speakeasy. Dozens of little chess guys are dressed to the nines in high-collared suits and flapper dresses. You spot Porrim, Jane and Rose at the bar, and you get a bit of bile in your throat at seeing Rose with that stupid sloshed expression on her face and a drink in her hand, laughing at the evidence of the prank on your face. Equius glowers in a dark corner of the room, terminally incapable of having fun. Feferi and Nepeta look as though they had a dance interrupted. Everyone’s quiet, and there’s an odd lull like everyone’s waiting on something.

You’re about to ask what it is everyone’s waiting on until there’s a flash and John Egbert appears, tumbling off the barstool next to Jane with the force of a punch from a week ago and falling on the floor, looking as confused as you at the cheers from the crowd. Both of you here, the music kicks up again and conversation starts to flow. Aradia wanders over to John and you’re left standing alone in the party, still phenomenally confused.

Fef seems to notice you floundering (heh) and she walks across the room, takes your arm and leads you outside into the muggy air of the Deadlight night. Before you can say anything, she’s fetched a tissue from her oyster shell-shaped clutch and is wiping the black marks off from around your eyes, tongue sticking out a bit and head tilted in protective concentration. “So,” you offer, “I got punched into next week. Into a party?”

“Hold krill,” is all she answers with, still cleaning up your face. When she’s satisfied with her work she lets you go, finally deigning to answer your question. “Yeah. When Cans hits you you just end up doing whatever you would’ve been doing in a week. We had a recording of it from Hal, John was wearing a headset. So we scheduled a party with mandatory attendance for everyone a week from when you got smacked. Clever, yeah?”

You guess. “And Aradia’s here?”

Feferi claps at that, extremely pointed teeth arranged in a grin. “Isn’t it great! It’s been a cray-sea week. A very long story! I’ll catch you up later,” she says, putting extra emphasis on the word _catch_. Her smile fades into a look of sweet concern. “I’m glad you’re okay.” She puts a reassuring hand on your shoulder.

You both look up at the night sky, deep red clouds flickering like static on the dark background, like an old-fashioned grubtube not tuned right. You hear Feferi sigh. “We shore are a long way from where we started.”

Sometimes you miss the two-mooned, starry sky of Alternia. But the memory of it is tangled up in how much pain and misery you experienced and caused there. You never felt alive there, dragging corpses to your lusus and watching as you broke everyone that bothered to care for you.

“We are,” you manage. “But. I wouldn’t ever want to go back.”

You can hear the frown in Feferi’s voice. “It really was an awful place. Awful for you, awful for everybody. I don’t think I completely realized it, growing up how I did, in my bubble. I thought I could fix it all. Make a world where we could all live in peace, where it wasn’t krill or be krilled.”

There’s a bit of silence. Cars trundle by on the street in front of the Colours & Mayhem, and you can hear the bass of Mobius Trip’s music through the windows behind you.

“Everyone out there,” you say, gesturing to the place beyond the sky where your friends are, “I’ll bet they’re making that world right now. Hopefully they make some big statues of us for saving their asses.”

She takes her hand off your shoulder. “I just hope they don’t forget about us.”

You think of Terezi. You wonder what she’s doing right now, if they won. Is she already losing herself in the work of making laws for a new world? Is she resting, content in victory?

You know she’s not. You know she’s looking for you. She tore the entire universe in half to get you back.

The least you can do, you think, looking up at the inescapable void of the singularity you’re in and down at the confusing city you’re embroiled in, is return the favor.

“Let’s show up and remind them.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little short. Had a busier week than I would've liked. This'll probably end up going longer than 10 chapters, we'll see. No more iconic duo than Homestuck and blowing right by expectations of time and wordiness.
> 
> Next chapter we’ll go back and find out how Aradia got here.
> 
> Yeah, Buttermilk Stubbs is from Problem Sleuth. Yes, Problem Sleuth happened in Deadlight Skaia in this world. No, I’m not gonna get into it. In this fic.
> 
> God I love weird Felt-power bullshit. I hope you enjoyed that time goofball-ness, I sure as hell did.
> 
> Photo composition of Deadlight rooftop includes “[Downtown Chicago After Storm](https://flic.kr/p/34myRs)” by Merrick Brown, used with permission under CC-BY-SA.


End file.
